Ranjan behind bars

Thursday 14th January, 2021

It is not only greedy eaters who get into trouble because of their tongues, with which they are said to dig their graves; politicians also find themselves in unenviable positions because of their restless tongues, and SJB MP Ranjan Ramanayake may be considered one of them. He will have to languish in jail for four years. The actor-turned-politician put on a bold face while being taken to prison, on Tuesday, but it will not take long for the sobering reality to dawn on him. Sri Lankan prisons are hellholes, to say the least, especially for those whose political enemies happen to be in power. Going to jail is a heroic deed only in the celluloid world. Nothing except a deus ex machina in the form of a presidential pardon can save Ranjan from incarceration.

One tends to take leave of one’s senses, when power goes to one’s head. This is what happened to Ranjan when he was in the yahapalana government. He apparently thought he enjoyed legal immunity, and the sky was the limit as he was very close to the leaders of that administration. It was near Temple Trees that he made the controversial statement which led to his jail term. If only he had cut out theatrics and acted sensibly.

Ranjan was on friendly terms with some judges if his leaked telephone recordings are anything to go by. In some of his voice clips, he is heard making inquiries from judges about matters related to court cases and offering favours. The conduct of the judicial officers concerned is beyond the pale. Every profession has its share of bad eggs. Ranjan made the mistake of coming out with a sweeping statement about the judiciary, in public, causing as he did an affront to the dignity of the entire institution.

Ranjan should have learnt from what befell S. B. Dissanayake, who committed contempt of court by making a derogatory statement about a Supreme Court judgment and had jail time imposed on him. Instead, he repeated his statement at issue. The Supreme Court took this fact into consideration in arriving at its decision. Somebody should have warned Ranjan.

Opinion may be divided on the severity of the punishment Ranjan has received, but hereafter the MPs who consider their privileges are a licence for them to insult others will be constrained to exercise control over their tongues at least outside Parliament. The Supreme Court judgment under discussion serves to redefine the way people exercise their freedom of expression, which is generally abused in this country, especially by politicians.

The significance of some remarks Ranjan made before being bundled into a prison vehicle, on Tuesday, may not have been lost on the discerning public. He said he had not committed murder or theft, but he had been sentenced to jail while MP ‘Pillayan’ was being released.

SLPP MP and former Eastern Province Chief Minister S. Chandrakanthan, popularly known as Pillayan, who was kept in remand prison over the assassination of TNA MP Joseph Pararajasingham, has been acquitted as the Attorney General’s Department decided not to proceed with the case against him and several others. Why did the AG’s Department wait so long to take that decision? Pillayan was in remand prison for five years. Why was legal action instituted against him, in the first place? Will Pillayan sue those who had him arrested and remanded? If not, why?

There is something Ranjan did not mention. A group of lawyers who ran amok in the Colombo High Court, smashing furniture, hurling abuse at the beleaguered judges including a female, and threatening them, after the judgment in the White Flag case was delivered, on 18 Nov. 2011, went scot- free. The police had to remove the judges in a state of shock to safety as the lawyers protesting against their judgement turned menacingly aggressive. The black-coated rioters should have been prosecuted for contempt of court; it would have been an open-and-shut case.

Ranjan has got four years RI for making a derogatory statement about the judiciary, and those who damaged court furniture and threatened judges would have received a much severer punishment if they had been tried. The culprits are practising law! Is it that the lawyers are above the law?